Stop whining and start winning: 6 reasons marketing IS for you

Whether you’ve been in business for a decade or a day, you’ve probably wondered if marketing your services is the right way to go. After all, you’ve made it this far doing little to no marketing. Why should you start now?

There are a lot of answers to that question, but we’ve narrowed it down to just six key reasons ALL technology solution providers (TSPs) should start marketing their services if they aren’t already.

1. Your referral stream could dry up

Hate to break it to you, but your referral stream may not always be running like Class VI rapids. It could slow down to a trickle. Then what will you do?

Firstly, never stop offering the kind of customer service that results in referrals! Word of mouth referrals are one of the highest compliments a business can receive, so keep up the good work. But still, keep in mind that this alone isn’t enough to keep your business running at full steam.

Use marketing to supplement your referral stream so you’ve always got a consistent lead flow.

2. Effective marketing doesn’t have to be expensive

Why add yet another expense to your workload and overhead? You’ve already got enough going on to have to add marketing costs to the mix, right? Here’s the truth: marketing CAN be very expensive, but that’s not a requirement for it to be effective. You don’t need a team, or even a dedicated marketing person to start generating leads.

What you have to do is learn how to create messaging that attracts your target audience–the people who are most likely to buy your services. Then send emails, or post to social media (we’ll get to that in a minute) with words that will resonate with them.

Track your efforts with a marketing management tool. This solution should help you create email and web campaigns, and monitor their progress and impact on the audience you send them to.

See? No need to shell out another salary right away. All you need to get started is time and creativity!

3. Marketing begins with what you already have

Think of your website as the digital front door to your business. Prospects will glean their first impression of you and your services here. If they get a bad impression of your website (i.e. info is hard to find, your services aren’t clearly listed, etc.) they’ll bail before you even get to have a conversation.

Don’t lose out on valuable potential customers! Set up forms to gather the interested prospect’s contact information, and make sure that information is stored in your CRM tool to guarantee your sales team sees that they need to be contacted immediately. These are usually the hottest leads because they’ve reached out directly to your company!

4. Campaigns don’t have to be complex to work well

One of the main goals of any marketing campaign is to keep your business “top of mind” when it comes to your clients and prospects. And it may surprise you to learn that you can do this without filling their inboxes with emails! Because honestly, who likes that?

It’s more impactful to send perfectly timed messages. To keep track of what’s going where and when, create a marketing calendar. It’ll take a little more time to plan up front, but doing this will allow you to schedule emails ahead of time to ensure you’re not doubling up on campaigns.

You’ll also be able to avoid wasting your time (another thing no one likes) when you’re able to see a holiday approaching and avoid sending emails when everyone is out of the office.

5. You’ll get stronger, more qualified leads

According to Gleanster Research, only 25% of leads are legitimate and should be passed to sales–just 25%. With leads coming in from different places, how can you know which ones are worthy of your sales team’s attention? Two words: lead scoring.

Setting up a lead scoring system can seem daunting, but it’s a very effective marketing effort that helps you determine which leads are truly worth the time and effort. With this system in place, you’ll be able to see a point system that identifies which prospects are most ready to be passed over to sales (making sure the most engaged clients are reached out to first).

6. Social media is your marketing BFF

By the end of 2016, 2.8 billion people were using social media, making it a great place to market your services. Use Facebook and LinkedIn to reach your prospects and clients where they spend the majority of their time. You can even offer special deals and discounts for your followers.

There are a variety of tools available to help you measure engagement (likes, shares, comments, and follower counts) so you know which messages are working, and which are falling flat. Some of them even offer scheduling features so you can write your posts ahead of time, and publish them at the peak of traffic (or whenever you’d like that message to be read).

Be the kind of business with a strong, relatable message that your followers will want to share. Let them get to know you and your culture so they know that you’re someone they want to work with.

If it still feels like marketing will open a can of worms you won’t be able to close again, don’t worry. The marketing experts at ConnectWise, LLC. will not only show you how to dip your toe in the marketing waters without drowning; you’ll be able to see return almost immediately!

ConnectWise Campaign™ (formerly CampaignDirector®) was designed to help TSPs build campaigns, design HTML, create forms, post to social media, review analytics, and more. And current ConnectWise Manage® partners can try it FREE for 30 days.

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